Whatever Lola Wants

by George Szanto

  He stuck the bottle three-quarters full on the rack and drove slowly to the Grange.

  6.

  Theresa had insisted on breaking up the trip. “Been a long time, Milton, who knows when I’ll be up that way again.”

  But at the Grange agreement on the question was complete. Milton had no business taking Theresa to Terramac.

  “Stupid that I wrote that letter,” Leonora said, her voice a thin edge. “John Cochan can be one mean parcel.”

  “You hit the nail on a hole in the head,” said Feasie.

  Leonora shook her head. “Couple of weeks ago he beat up his wife and she lost the baby she was carrying.”

  “How do you know that?” Gossip from Leonora?

  “I have my sources.”

  “Theresa wants to see the place,” Milton said, “so we’re going.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t.”

  Leonora had recommended against telling Karl about the visit. “He’s in the middle of some professional problem, let’s not bother him.” Sarah couldn’t be reached.

  Ti-Jean joined his wife and sister-in-law in trying to keep Milton and Theresa from going.

  Theresa said, “I got me a new suit of armor” and shook with laughter. Only tying her down would keep her at the Grange.

  Feasie must have reached deep into her aphorism sack for the supporting declaration, “I suppose you can’t make an omelette without opening the whole can of worms.”

  Theresa in her right-sided way shook her head, proclaimed Feasie correct, and thanked her so warmly she blushed. Years ago, Milton remembered, Theresa often made Feasie blush.

  Theresa asked to sit out back for a few minutes, she wanted to breathe some cool air.

  Ti-Jean said, “Get on some bug stuff. Mosquitoes are restless today.”

  Milton walked and Theresa rolled over the rough ground to the grass. She’d maneuver from there, she insisted. Milton returned to the house but watched her through the window. A long while since Theresa had been so pleased with herself. At one point she shifted the direction her chair faced and with her good hand shoved up the sleeve of her left arm. Milton wondered at this but let her be.

  You set, Theresa?

  Just about. What’s going on?

  Why, preparations everywhere.

  I don’t see a thing.

  Of course not. You’re mortal.

  Tell me about it. Keep me entertained. While we wait.

  Well, the termite’s loosening his jaws. And in the stream, against a splinter of granite, the hellgrammite’s whetting its pincers.

  What’s that got to do with us?

  Nothing. And everything.

  And me? With my sleeve up?

  The wasp, he’s transformed his ovipositor, he’s ground it to a fine lance point.

  What’s that mean?

  The mosquitoes are mulching saliva, there’s mayflies all over the place, out of season but they want to be around. And you should see the damselflies. My faves.

  We’re ready, you mean?

  Barbs. Stilettoes. Hooks.

  We’ve each got our weapon. Let’s head out.

  Relax, Theresa. Close your eyes a while. Good. Here, I’ll stroke your brow.

  After a few minutes Milton came to get her. “Time to be off.” He saw her arm. “Tessa?”

  Her bare left arm had been stung half a dozen times, little red welts. And another bite, yellow, bigger. She shook her head. “Doesn’t itch at all.” She pulled her sleeve back down.

  “You sure?”

  “Sure I’m sure.”

  “Good.” He walked beside her to the van. “That big one looks angry.”

  Theresa asked for a large hug from Feasie. Unusual. But little had been normal since the stroke. “Think us luck with the slimeslug— Oh, I mean our host, Handy Johnnie.”

  “Great good luck.”

  “That’s it.”

  Luck. Theresa, accepting the possibility of luck. Milton marvelled.

  She rolled her chair onto the lift platform, Milton dropped the arm, raised the chair, and slid Theresa onto the seat in the van. He strapped the belt about her. He swung the rear door open, worked the wheelchair up the ramp, set her foilpole out of the way, rolled the chair in and fastened it in place. He sat behind the wheel and drove from the Grange. He glanced over. The outing was doing her good.

  Theresa remained silent till they angled onto the Terramac road. She asked him to pull off. He crunched onto the shoulder, stopped, and turned to face her.

  With her right hand she reached for his left wrist, grabbed it, squeezed it tight. She released him, with her good hand brought her left to the knob of the shift stick rising from the floor. Then her left hand alone lay on the knob. Slowly her fingers began to bend, they closed around it. They were white, as if congealing in place. She set her right hand on top of her left and, the two a forked extension of the shift, turned her shoulders and chest about to face him. “The muscles have gone soft in there. But they move.”

  He put both his hands on top of hers, his grin locked in place. “They’ll come back.”

  She nodded twice. “They’ll do what they have to. When they have to.”

  Her slur had grown stronger but he understood everything. He raised her hands one by one from the knob, slid over close beside her, brought his arms around her neck, leaned his head on her chest. They sat this way a couple of minutes, he with his face against her shirt, she staring through the window toward Terramac.

  She said, “Maybe it was the bites.”

  “What bites? The mosquitoes?”

  “All of them. Lances. I felt something move inside my arm. Not move, more like flow, I don’t know. Something happened. Back on the grass.”

  He touched her cheek and shook his head. “Extraordinary.”

  “Out there, sitting, it was a moment of peace. I realized a bunch of things, Milton.”

  “Like?” He watched her face. Could a full smile ever come to it again? Her eyes held steady on his, back, forth, not blinking.

  “What we’ve done in the last forty years. I sat there, I saw pieces of the forty years. Like pictures on the TV. Except the screen was the sky. From us in Europe back then, to right now, this summer. A few miracles.”

  He smiled. “Carney coming to us this summer, that was some kind of miracle.”

  “Miracles are organized coincidence.”

  “A lucky chance.”

  “Yeah.” A bare nod.

  “Do you think he and Sarah will stay together?”

  “I hope so.” On her lips the twitch was stronger now. Her eyes filled with mirth, as at some delightful private joke. He knew she wouldn’t tell him.

  “Milton, here’s what I figured.”

  He waited. He tried to help. “When you were over on the grass?”

  “Yeah. I think, near all our life together you’ve been between me and the kids. You know? All of them. Including Sarah. For certain the last twenty years.”

  “Between?”

  “Like, a magnet. Holding them close. They’ve stayed close. To me, now. I’m glad. That I’m still near them. I might have—just let them go. You held us together. I never understood.”

  He stroked her cheek again. “I was just being there.”

  “That’s what I mean.”

  “Little enough.”

  “Everything.”

  “You’re dramatizing again, Tessa.”

  Her head quivered right, back, right. “You kept them close.”

  “They’re closer now.”

  “I could’ve been closer to them all the time. A waste.”

  “You will be. You’ll like that.”

  “We both will.”

  “Each in our way.” He smiled again. “Like it’s been for forty years, right?”

  She looked away again, down the road. “More.”

  For half a minute neither spoke. Milton pulled back. “We should be heading along.”

  She nodded. “Would you make my hair clip a little tighter?
”

  Milton reached behind her head and pulled the clip taut.

  Then her left hand rose, millimeters of slowness, by itself. Her fingers took his forearm, worked up to his elbow, with infinite determination to his shoulder, touched his neck, at last his cheek. “Thank you, Milton.”

  He kissed her, a gentle breath, and pulled away. “Come on. We don’t want to keep John Cochan waiting.”

  “No.” Theresa panted her small laugh. “That would not do.”

  BUGS

  The termite loosens his jaws, tightens his face.

  The crab-louse marches, onward, to the pubic joints.

  The mosquito mulches her saliva, seeps it down to her lancet base.

  The wasp grinds his ovipositor to a skewer point.

  The sucking cone-nose, that assassin bug, hones her orifice.

  Against a granite splinter the hellgrammite whets its curving pincers.

  Barbs, stilettoes, hooks. Prepared for the crisis

  with many answers.

  Roberta Feyerlicht, Jan. 13, 2004

  7.

  John Cochan waited alone, ready for his guests. Steed and Yak and Harry would be there already.

  In the end each man is alone. All along he had known this. But he’d hidden from this knowledge. He wanted to believe in collaboration with good men, canny men. A few women too. Except they could never truly unite with him, not in Terramac, his econovum. But is it not inherent in the very nature of a perfected vision that only one man can see it truly, grasp it in all its shapes and forms? Believe in it, apply it, stand one day at its peak, yet see it still as the play of light and shadow it once was, its first flash and its final manifestation become a unity?

  Alone now, and alone this morning, before dawn. It had still been dark when he’d driven in the silence of his Silver Cloud to the farmhouse, sealed, abandoned. First light streaked across the sky to the east. He marched along the little path, across the field, by the hill, into the wood. Here in deeper dark he followed the path, untraveled this summer, overgrown, his flashlight beam keeping him on track. He heard the stream before he saw it. He worked his way along, bending low, downhill, the brush thick again, and found the muddy bank where the stream divided. Here, the sluice walls; over there the opening, the cave, water flowing in. He took off his shoes, waded in, stood at the mouth. He folded his arms and stared into impenetrable darkness. He closed his eyes. He breathed, “Benjie.”

  On the inside of his eyelids he saw Benjie. Benjie, happy, running across the field. Johnnie called his name. Did Benjie hear? Benjie? Want to go camping? By ourselves, and leave the others. Later she, the one gone now, laughed, mockery: You, going camping? Johnnie hated her then, already.

  Benjie? Why did you ride the waterchute?

  Benjie didn’t hear. John Cochan opened his eyes. The chute, thick, black. Specks of dirty white foam. He was alone.

  Yak, Steed, Harry. They’d never understand being alone. From Harry he expected little more than measurements, equations. But that little was loyalty. To have his way, Harry had whispered poison in the ears of the others; for a wall he’d maligned John Cochan.

  Steed, what a surprise he was. Steed who only days ago had explained to Harry the wondrous implications of the final blast. Now Aristide Boce argued, this very afternoon, they should await the final survey, unclear under whose land this wall of calcium, granite, limestone, descended. Oh Steed, how your eminence withers.

  Worse, far worse, was Yak, as close a friend as a man could enjoy, hinting at doubts and legality. Why must they bore John Cochan with legalities? He’d played at the edge of the legal all his life, defining it, creating it. Goddamn it, the edge was his life. And Yak knew this, yet here he comes now, the danger of the blast, the danger of Magnussen and his wife as witnesses. Tries to argue from how the layers sit, the striations, Harry-talk from Yak’s mouth. No, no danger, John had seen all the projections. No problem.

  Not in the projections. But deep inside Yak, a man who believed in the caverns. Except, had Yak’s belief been whole-hearted? But Yak had pretended too. To find such betrayal of friendship, after so many years. A disease, festering.

  The blast would go forward. Dr. Magnussen had to be there, such a fine antagonist. The husband too. Oh they’d see why they had to sell, at last. He’d go back to his offer of $10 million. When they saw what lay back there, they’d understand. He thought then, Maybe not sell, maybe in the end ownership wasn’t necessary, maybe a thousand-year lease. They would see for themselves why he had to proceed.

  8.

  Sarah in her Jeep and Carney from Richmond arrived at the Grange turn-off moments apart. Gentleman that he was, open vehicle that she had, he let her go first. So he drove down the road chewing dust. They pulled up, got out, she came toward him grinning with pleasure and, first things first, they kissed. His throat hadn’t loosened up.

  Ti-Jean ambled down the steps. His face was out of joint, his brow so crimped it might have gone corrugated. Behind him stood Feasie, arms folded, eyes to the ground.

  “What’s wrong, Fease?” No answer. “Ti-Jean?”

  Ti-Jean scratched his hair. “Theresa and Milton.” He shook his head. “They were acting weird.”

  “What?” Sarah grabbed Ti-Jean’s arm. “They okay?”

  “Oh sure, I guess so. They’ve gone off to Terramac.”

  A stab in Carney’s throat. “When?”

  “Maybe”—Feasie shrugged—“forty, forty-five minutes ago?”

  “You let them? Just like that?” Sarah stared at Feasie.

  “Am I going to stop Theresa? Milton figured it was okay. Anyway, they had an invitation.”

  Because of Carney? Damn! “From who?” Mot pulled hard. And whispered Theresa’s words, He’ll kill me. Unless I kill him first.

  “The Sheriff, Nottingham, he delivered it. From Handy Johnnie.”

  “Come on.” Carney grabbed Sarah’s arm. They ran to the Jeep, jumped in. Sarah revved the engine.

  Ti-Jean and Feasie caught up. “What’re you doing?”

  “Getting them out of there.” Carney saw Mot nodding. “Come on, Sarah, move it!”

  The tires screamed on gravel, back, out. Feasie yelled, “We’ll come too!”

  They wound up the dirt road and screeched along Fortier Creek. Sarah glanced to Carney. “What’re you thinking?”

  “He’ll take them down there, Cochan will, I mean. Theresa thinks she’s got to kill him.”

  “What?!”

  “We have to get them out.”

  Miles ahead Milton drew up in front of a trailer, stopped the engine, stepped out of the van. He was in guarded shock from his first view of the razed land. Theresa had nodded merely. As if she’d seen it before.

  John Cochan received them. “Welcome, welcome. Delighted to have you here.” He marched around and opened the door for Theresa.

  “I’ll get that.” Milton swung the rear door wide, rolled the chair back, down the ramp and around, slid Theresa onto it, lowered her, handed her her pole.

  Cochan understood the problem. He called two men over, explained, and within minutes they, three others, a forklift, and a back-hoe had improvised a ramp up to the trailer porch, four sheets of Québois Fina end to end supported by sacks of cement. Two burley men tested it with their weight.

  “Will that be too steep, Mr. Magnussen?” Cochan looked to Theresa, who scowled, lined herself up with the ramp base, accelerated, and zipped up to the porch platform. Cochan smiled. “Very impressive.” They followed Theresa. Cochan opened the trailer door. They went inside. “Would you care for some tea? Or coffee?”

  Theresa’s head twitched, no.

  “Something stronger?”

  “No, thanks.” Milton smiled, his lips tight.

  “Well. We’ll go down in a few minutes. You’ll see the future that links our destines.”

  Theresa glanced up at Milton, caught his eye, touched her throat, mockery of Cochan’s scarlet necktie. Black suit, black shoes.

  “In th
e meantime, let me show you the models.” He did, and checked his watch every couple of minutes. He left them. They could examine the maquettes of surface Terramac at their leisure. “I’ll just call ahead, we’ll organize a little trailer rig for Dr. Magnussen’s wheelchair.”

  Theresa watched Milton. He glanced at the maquettes, shrugged. His head shook, she saw him bite the insides of his cheeks. She touched his arm with her foilpole, smiled, nodded, “It’ll be okay.”

  Cochan returned, grinning. “You’ll be fascinated, John. Appropriate, isn’t it, our sharing not only this land but first names as well.”

  Theresa said, “He doesn’t use that name.” She could feel Milton grasping tight on the back of her chair.

  “I’m sorry, what did she say?” Cochan sounded interested.

  Milton answered, “Nothing important.”

  9.

  Sarah turned down the Terramac highway. A minute later the hut stood ahead, bar over the road, spikes gleaming. She stopped.

  A tall guard strode to Sarah’s side. “Yes, ma’am?”

  “We have an appointment with John Cochan.”

  “Your name?”

  “Magnussen.”

  “Well now, the Magnussen party came through some little while ago.”

  “Mr. Cochan invited all of us. I’m the daughter. We’re late.”

  He squinted at Sarah. “You got some identification?”

  She showed him her driver’s license, two credit cards. “Come on, open the gate. Mr. Cochan won’t be happy.”

  The guard pointed to Carney. “Who’s the gentleman?”

  “For godsake, man, he’s my husband. Just open up!”

  Another slow perusal. He meandered back to the guardhouse. The pike rose, the spikes retracted. They roared through. Carney glanced back. Just coming into view, Ti-Jean’s and Feasie’s truck. But the pike was lowering.

  On. And on. The rise. The wasted plain of Terramac below. Sarah whispered, “Un-be-lievable.” She stepped hard on the gas and they sped down. “What shit.”

  “We can go now. Everything’s ready and waiting for us.” John Cochan reached for Theresa Magnussen’s chair.

  “No.” With her right hand Theresa moved her left arm, left hand holding the foilpole flat against the chair’s bar, if necessary to wipe Cochan away. Cochan pulled back. Milton held the door open. Theresa’s right hand worked the controls. With care she propelled the chair out, down the trailer ramp, on past a shiny gray Rolls-Royce.